Old City Pizza opens with homemade pasta at Pearl Street Grill & Brewery

Pearl Street Grill & Brewery’s basement is about to gain a new dinner draw, and the homemade pasta is what separates Old City Pizza from a standard pizza launch. The concept is set to open Friday, May 29, with a grand-opening celebration from 5 p.m. to 8 p.m. at 76 Pearl St., bringing a Neapolitan-style menu into the former Brawler’s Deli space below one of downtown Buffalo’s busiest hospitality properties.

Old City Pizza is entering with a menu built for more than one kind of visit. Pearl Street says the lineup will include 10 varieties of Neapolitan-style pizza, homemade pasta dishes, meatballs, authentic Italian sandwiches, salads and coffee from SPoT Coffee. The restaurant is also expected to operate with an open kitchen centered around a large brick oven, a setup that puts the scratch-made approach front and center for diners heading downstairs.

The ingredients are part of the pitch, too. Pearl Street says the kitchen will use pure wheat flour, D.O.P. San Marzano tomatoes and Italian extra-virgin olive oil, framing the concept as a more premium take on familiar Italian-American comfort food. That detail matters for the pasta crowd because the noodles are not being treated as a side note. They are one of the opening-day pillars of the restaurant’s identity.

The project also carries a family story that runs well beyond Buffalo’s downtown core. Pearl Street says CEO Bill Casale’s family migrated to America in 1899 from Calabria, Italy, and that the Casale name is tied to Casale’s in Niagara Falls, which operated for almost 75 years. Buffalo Rising reported that the idea for Old City Pizza took shape at a pizza convention in Las Vegas, where Casale and Jeremiah Siford found the flour that helped inspire the menu. Buffalo Rising also said Casale learned more about his grandfather’s pizzeria history in Niagara Falls, where his grandfather owned Casale’s.

Old City Pizza is opening inside a building with deep downtown roots of its own. Pearl Street Grill & Brewery opened in 1997 at 76 Pearl St., according to the Buffalo State Digital Commons, and the property now spans four floors, a basement and nine bars. Folding a homemade pasta program into that space gives the new pizzeria a clear lane: a visible, brick-oven Italian spot with enough range to pull in lunch traffic, pre-show diners and regulars looking for something beyond the usual slice.